An unprecedented assessment project involving half the states is planning a significant shift: Instead of designing one test for all of them, it will offer a choice of a longer and a shorter version. The pivot came in response to some states' resistance to spending more time and money on testing for the common standards. The plan under discussion last week among state education chiefs of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium represents the collision of hope and reality, as states confront what is politically and fiscally palatable and figure out how that squares with the more in-depth--and potentially more valuable--approach to testing promised by the consortium. The evolving two-pronged approach would give states the option of using a version of the Smarter Balanced test whose multiple sessions and classroom activities span nearly 6 1/2 hours in grades 3-5, close to seven hours in grades 6-8, and eight hours in high school, or the group's original version, which lasts about four hours longer in grades 3-8 and about five hours longer in high school. Because the assessments would be built on the same blueprint, with a mix of multiple-choice, constructed-response, and technology-enhanced items, as well as lengthy performance tasks, the two versions would deliver comparable results. Both would produce the school-, district- and state-level information needed to meet federal accountability requirements. Both versions would yield overall scores for each student in mathematics and English/language arts, as well as some results within each of those subjects, such as a separate score for students' writing and research skills, or for their grasp of math concepts and procedures. But because a shorter version of the test is more limited in what it can validly say about an individual student's performance, an extended version--with more items of each type--would be needed to make the finer-grained "claims" about each student's learning in multiple areas of each subject that can yield richer portraits for teachers, parents, and state officials. It would be up to each state to choose which version of the assessment it uses. Early signs suggest that public antipathy toward testing and states' tight fiscal straits are leading more than a few to consider the shorter version. It was pressure from chiefs within the Smarter Balanced consortium that prompted the group earlier this year to explore the option of two versions.